The Black Horse is Ready to Ride
The Black Horse is ready
to ride!
By
Pastor F. M. Riley
January 15, 2014
“And when He had opened the third seal, I heard the third beast [living creature] say, Come [and see]. And I beheld, and lo a black horse; and he
that sat on him had a pair of balances in his hand.
And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts [living creatures] say, A measure of wheat for a
penny [denarius], and
three measures of barley for a penny [denarius]; and see thou hurt not the oil and the
wine,” Revelation 6:5-6.
Introduction
Yes, I plead guilty of trying to warn lost men and women, boys and
girls, about what they are going to have to face if left behind on this earth
after the resurrection and rapture of New Covenant believers has occurred. Over the past 20 years or so, a few have paid
attention and sought the Lord Jesus Christ as their Savior. Praise the Lord! On the other hand, many have spurned the
warning and invitation. I
had one young lady in particular
contemptuously tell me, “So what if there
is going to be a Tribulation period on the earth! I will face it and go through it just like I
have faced other things. Bring it on!” My heart cried and grieved for that young
lady. She had no realization of what she
was saying or facing, just as many others today who treat the inspired Word
with contempt.
So what is going to happen to those left behind on the earth following
the resurrection and rapture of New Covenant believers? The entire Book of Revelation, chapters four through twenty-two,
details what will follow the rapture.
There are so many different events mentioned that it would require a
book to examine them all. But in this
study, only one such event will be examined; that which happens under the
opening of the third “seal” on the Seven Sealed book, Revelation
5:1; 6:1-6.
The
opening of the first four Seals
What is set
forth under the opening of the first four seals is a prophetic picture of the
coming and rise to power of the one we refer to today as “the
anti-christ.” He is the rider on all
four of the horses, with the color of each horse portraying one period of time
in his rise to power over all the earth.
The
First Seal…..On the opening of the
first seal he comes riding out on the world scene as a “man of peace” and
under the guise of “peace” he will deceive and slay many people, Daniel
11:21-24. But an evil man can
deceive people only so long disguised as a man of “peace.” After a while the people begin to see through
his disguise and recognize his true character.
The Second Seal…..So on the
opening of the second seal, he rides
a red horse; a symbol of “war.” After his true character has
been exposed, he is forced to go to war to remain in his position of power,
therefore he is given “a great sword” and the power “to
take peace from the earth.” War will literally break out all over the
earth as the people rise up in rebellion against their leaders and even against
each other.
The Third Seal…..During
a time of war, especially wide spread world war, the fields cannot be plowed
and seed sown, crops cannot be gathered in, and people are forced to live off
of whatever food they had in reserve when the war began. So on the opening of the third seal he [the anti-christ] is
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portrayed as riding a black horse; the
symbol of starvation. More about
this in a minute.
The Fourth Seal…..War and
famine always result in death. So on the
opening of the fourth seal he is
portrayed as riding a pale horse [the
color of one dead or dying], and he is assigned the name of Death. Significantly, the inspired Word states that “Hell
followed with him.” This is to
be expected, because every soul that dies goes to either heaven or hell,
depending on whether they have received God’s way of salvation [John 14:6], or whether they have
rejected Him. Those who choose to
believe in and follow the anti-christ are destined for hell.
These first four seals will all be opened in the first half of
the Tribulation period, so all four of these predicted events will come to pass
within a short time after the beginning of the Tribulation. In other words, these events are right
now very near.
But now let’s turn our attention specifically to the opening of…..
The
Third Seal and The Black
Horse
As this seal is opened the anti-christ comes forth riding on a black horse. He is seen as having a pair of balances in
his hand. These balances are obviously
used in measuring or weighing out a certain amount of food. This is a
clear indication that shortly into the Tribulation period there will be world
wide food rationing. The anti-christ,
the rider on the black horse, since he will become the ruler of the entire
world system for a season, will be in charge of food rationing for the whole
world. His decree is obviously that one
will be able to buy a “measure” of wheat for a “denarius.” The “denarius” was a full
days wages for a day laborer, Matthew 20:1-15.
A “measure” of wheat amounts to
approximately one quart of wheat.
This is just enough wheat when ground into flour to bake one loaf of
bread. In other words, food will be so
scarce shortly after the beginning of the Tribulation that a loaf of bread will
be selling for a full days wages! Think
about it! Yet there are other
considerations…..
Right now the entire world economy is teetering on the brink of imminent
collapse. World wide, there are already
several million people out of work, and more factories, businesses, and
places of employment are failing and closing their doors every day. During the coming Tribulation period, there
will be very little work for anyone. But
the rich who will have a little money left will show no mercy whatsoever on the
general populace. What little food is
available will still be SOLD for a profit. Those who do not have jobs and the
money to BUY simply will not eat.
MILLIONS of people will die of starvation, Revelation 6:8.
Some readers will simply refuse to believe that such
is going to happen. I can almost hear
some of them saying, “This is America.
This is the land of abundance.” Hogwash! I know it will come as a great shock to many
of our readers, but our American farmers no longer produce any where near the
food needed to feed the American people.
I challenge any reader to go to the canned good aisle in the average
supermarket in America and pick up the different can goods on the shelf and
look at them carefully to see where the food in the can was produced and
canned. It will become glaringly
apparent that almost all of the food in the supermarkets of America
today is imported from other countries.
Very little food is still produced here in this country. I think I would be safe in saying that at
least 7 cans of food out of 10 you pick up and examine will be from China, or
some other foreign country. Many of the food products sold in our
supermarkets today come from South America.
Now a simple question…..
What happens when these countries now supplying the major part of
America’s food suddenly cut us off? Many
of these nations already hate this country and would like to see it fall. So when the world economy collapses and these
nations cut off the food they are presently selling to America, what happens
then? What happens when word of the
dire situation finally gets out, and the people in panic raid and loot the
supermarkets and grocery stores of all the food they can manage to carry
off?
What happens the day you go to the supermarket or grocery store and find
it closed, or find the shelves empty and no food to buy?
I firmly believe this is why the inspired Word refers to the rider under
this third seal as riding a black
horse. Now let me tell you about this…..
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The
Truth about Starvation
Because America has always been a “land of abundance,” few people in
America have ever seen anyone who literally starved to death. I have!
What I am about to relate is absolute truth.
When I was pastoring my first church in Stillwater, Oklahoma way back in
the 1950’s and early 1960’s, a Christian family moved from Arkansas to
Stillwater, Oklahoma so the man in the family could finish getting his Master’s
Degree from Oklahoma State University located in Stillwater. The entire
family joined our church so that they could have a church home while he was
going to school. That family was a real
blessing to us, and I thanked and praised God for sending them to help us.
There were several boys in the family, but only one daughter. The daughter was blessed with a special
talent of playing the piano. She could
play beautifully, and agreed to serve as our church pianist during the time
they were with us. What a blessing she
was!
That family was with us nearly three years
as the man in the family attended school and secured his Master’s degree at
Oklahoma State University. We had a lot
of sweet fellowship together. Finally,
the time arrived when he had obtained what he had come for, and the family
moved on. When they left us, they moved
to Pampa, Texas, where he had been called to pastor a church. Through my monthly newsletter and personal
letters and phone calls we kept in touch with one another.
A year or so after the family had moved to Pampa, we received a letter
from them telling us that their daughter had been diagnosed with cancer, and
asking us to pray for her. Things went
from bad to worse, and after several months the daughter died. But she did not die of the cancer! The cancer had matastisized into some of her
vital organs, preventing her from receiving any nourishment from her food, and
finally preventing her from even eating.
In spite of the doctors trying to feed her through a tube, over a period
of months she literally starved to
death.
When we were notified of her death, my wife and I made the trip of some
400 miles to be with her family and attend her funeral. When we arrived in Pampa, we went straight to
the funeral home to view her body and pay our final respects. At the funeral home, the family had set a
photo of her on the casket so that those who viewed her body would know what
she looked like before she was stricken with cancer and finally died. When we looked into that casket what we saw
was a totally BLACK carcass of a person with dark BLACK skin
stretched over the skeleton. My wife
literally became hysterical as she viewed the young lady’s body, crying and
screaming that it just couldn’t be her.
I had to physically hold up my wife and help her out of the funeral home
and back to our car to keep her from collapsing after viewing that terrible
sight. I have been called upon to preach many funeral services over the years,
but that was literally the most gruesome corpse I have ever seen.
Folks, we learned later that when a person dies of malnutrition and
starvation the hundreds of little blood veins in the body collapse releasing
whatever amount of blood they normally carry into the cavity of the body. As more and more of the veins collapse the
body literally turns BLACK. I
don’t mean a shade of grey! I mean BLACK as in the darkness of
night.
Now do our readers understand why the inspired Word refers to this third
horse as a BLACK HORSE? The
inspired Word explicitly states that “the fourth part of the earth” will
die from the “sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of
the earth,” Revelation 6:8. Folks,
millions of people will actually and literally starve to death
during the first half of the Tribulation period. Their BLACK BODIES will cover the face
of the earth, wherever they finally collapse and die, Jeremiah 25:33.
THIS IS THE FUTURE THAT IS AWAITING ALL PRESENT DAY
CHRIST REJECTERS, AND IT IS STARING HUMANITY IN THE FACE RIGHT NOW!
Conclusion
Dear readers,
the God of Heaven, whom I serve in truth, is not a despotic tyrant and
takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked, Ezekiel 18:23; 18:31-32. We can derive from the writings of
the early apostles that they were
expecting the Lord to return in their lifetime, but He didn’t! Rather, the
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Lord God explicitly told Peter in his
inspired epistle, “And account that the longsuffering of our Lord is salvation….,” 2
Peter 3:15. Every day that the
Lord delays His return is to give some lost soul an opportunity to repent and
believe and be saved. Read 2
Peter 3:9. But also read 3:10! The Lord is coming, and all of the
indicators predicted in the inspired Word to precede His coming are present
right now. How long will some reader
wait until you acknowledge the truth of God’s Word and call upon the only
ONE [Acts 4:12; John 14:6] who
can save your soul and rescue you from entering into the terrible judgments
that are just ready to be poured out upon a Christ rejecting humanity?
Yes, I do beg and plead with every reader to make their calling and
election sure, 2 Corinthians 13:5; 2 Peter 1:10. I KNOW I am saved, 2
Timothy 1:12, and I would like for every reader to have that same
assurance, 1 John 5:13. I would
like to meet every reader in Heaven when our Lord comes to receive us to
Himself, John 14:1-3. Please
don’t disappoint me!
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Permission is granted to any true
believer or Bible believing ministry to reproduce this study to share
with others, or to quote from it in
context as written.
Thanks again to all those readers who have held up this preacher before
God in your prayers and this ministry with your gifts. Only eternity will be able to reveal the good
that you have helped to accomplish. May
our gracious Lord God abundantly bless you every one is my prayer.
Please address all questions, comments, and correspondence to: Pastor
F. M. Riley, Last Call Gospel Ministry, 184 County Road 108, Harrisburg,
Missouri 65256, or I can be contacted by email at:
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